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What follows is, probably, not quite what you expected to
find here but, since no-one elected to disseminate any useful (however
dull) information for travellers here, we thought we would regale you with
a tale from 'NigeCh' which may give you an idea of what can happen when
sailors decide to take a train...
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WATERLOO
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by 'NigeCh'
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Back in the late 70's, we used to manage to finish work
at about 5 o'clock. It should have been half past five, but who cared? We were earning a
pittance! We would rush off to London's Waterloo station, for the train to
Southampton, on the south coast, and collect the RFD 12-person
life raft from the left luggage office. Those were still the days of wooden carriages, when there were such people as 'helpful' porters.
It was just before the Admiral's Cup race and we were on our way to
Cowes to crew on the 'Noremya'.
The life raft required three people to lift it and the carriage doors were small ... As we were kicking the thing into the carriage, a friendly porter decided to take action, as the train was scheduled to leave, so he
got into the carriage and, searching for something by which he could
grasp a portion of the liferaft and help us, decided to pull on a token lanyard, even though the
life raft was already most of the way inside.
There was an almighty 'WHOOOOMPH' followed by a spectacular eruption of bits of flying wood, glass and Southern Region pictures ... The carriage had blown up and a sliver of glass had punctured
the, now limp, life raft.
The train did not leave on time. We hot-footed it across to another
platform to get the Portsmouth train instead. The owner of 'Noremya' was not pleased when we told him that his
life raft had blown up Waterloo...
The next morning we heard, on the radio, that there had been a terrorist attack at Waterloo and that the Metropolitan Police were seeking to interview 4 unkempt youths ....
Ron managed to 'borrow' a fictitious life raft for the pre-race inspections and, with some 120 lb less payload, we were placed in all the races.
By the way, in those days, we used to use 2B pencils, paper charts, a tide atlas, a Walker log ... and had no radio. Food was cooked on a 1 pint
Primus stove, screwed down, and so forth.
We never did find out what happened to the 'now departing' train - nor did we care, as we
had been invited to crew on 'Corillion'.
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| Our thanks to Nige, for
entertaining us, as so often, with the confessions of his well spent
youth...
Meanwhile, we were bemoaning the absence of any hot travel tips
(apart from 'Do not attempt to travel on trains with large life rafts)
when, lo and behold, up popped this one in the firm's inbox: http://www.ebookers.com
is, so we are told, a do-it-yourself travel booking facility on the Internet, by means of which it is possible to save oneself some money on
travel. Sounds good to us! Thanks to P. K. Taylor for letting us all in on that
one.
Have you a travel story or a tip to share? We'd love
to hear about it!
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